The Wizards haven’t won 50 games in a regular season since 1979, the last time they made the NBA Finals. They haven’t been to so much as a conference finals since.
The totality of the franchise’s futility since is stark.
Since 1979, the NBA has gone through the Magic-Bird era, the Jordan era, the Kobe-Shaq era, the Iverson era, the Spurs’ dynasty, the Warriors’ dynasty, multiple teams (the Pistons, Rockets and Heat) winning multiple championships, rebuilds of the Lakers and Celtics into championship teams, James’ two-plus decades career, the Malice at the Palace, David Stern’s reign as commissioner, dozens of rules changes, the Seattle SuperSonics becoming the Oklahoma City Thunder, NBC getting the broadcast rights to NBA games in 1989, NBC losing those rights in 2002, NBC getting them back in 2025, the Dream Team, and the vanguard of international players coming into the league.
And during all of that, the Wizards have been utterly irrelevant.
“If people say, ‘Are you going to D.C.?’ or D.C. comes to town, guys stay up a little later, and kind of mess around in the game,” Wizards forward Anthony Davis said on the first day of training camp.
If all goes to plan, though, Dybantsa will start to change that.
“I say, ‘AJ, don’t you feel the pressure?'” said his father, whom everyone calls Ace. “He goes, ‘What pressure?’ I say, ‘The pressure of doing well, the pressure of people coming after you.’ He says, ‘Dad, I’m just hooping. I just put my head down.’
“So, I say, ‘This is the NBA, different pressure.’ He says, ‘The ball hasn’t changed. I’m still hooping.'”
His impact on the Wizards, before he’s played a single regular-season game, is already palpable. New season-ticket sales are up more than 600 percent since the Wizards won the lottery, per a team spokesperson, compared with the same time period last year. Overall, new season-ticket sales have increased more than 200 percent.
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Season-ticket leads — inquiries from the public about buying seats for the coming season — have increased 62 percent since the lottery, and 53 percent of that came after Washington drafted Dybantsa. And the buzz around the team from national NBA media, which has, with justification, ignored the franchise for generations, is significant.
A lot of eyes will be on Anicet Dybantsa Jr.
“When the Wizards called me, they go, ‘What level do you think AJ is?'” said Joe Saunders, Dybantsa’s AAU coach when his talent began to blossom in his early teens.
“I think he can be a superstar,” Saunders said. “I really think he can get on that, like, Giannis, Wemby level. Now it depends upon him, in becoming a man, those big things your father taught you, those little things Coach Joe taught you. … How’s it going to be now, when you have money? How’s it going to be when you have women (paying more attention)? I think he’s going to be fine, because Ace has done a great job, equipped him with a lot …
“This s—‘s embedded in him.”
